The rapid and efficient movement of most commercial goods is wholly dependent upon powered industrial vehicles known as forklifts. Forklifts for the most part have short cast steel bodies with a short turn radius and an electric or internal combustion engine. The forklift has a pair of forks/tines that can be adjusted so that the base and floor perpendicular tines can be raised and lowered as desired. Likewise the operator may adjust to different widths between the forks.
Forklifts are used for goods that are to be moved from point A to point B such as from the hollow of a truck trailer to a storage area in the warehouse. Ordinarily, such goods are on a pallet which is a raised platform with a hollow underneath to receive the forks. In operation, the forklift driver will approach the pallet and after squaring up will move the floor parallel forks into the pallet hollow. The forks, with the load, are then raised and forklift is driven to the receiving place for the pallet of goods. After the loaded pallet is lowered, the forklift backs up and the driver seeks new load.
While the process is essentially simple, there are numerous problems with the generic system. For example, the pallet may be 42 inches long/deep and the forklift parallel forks may be 60 inches long. If the pallets are back to back an unwary operator may drive through the first pallet hollow into the second pallet hollow and begin to raise his forks. The second pallet will then tip over. Such an accident may injure an unwary worker or damage the goods such as spilling raw materials. This can cause a difficult to clean up mess along with other economic costs.
Additionally, if the unwary driver is unloading a truck the potential exists for the operator to punch holes through the thin walls of a truck trailer or damage the walls of a building. With Range ALERT™ the driver has a digital readout on his dashboard that tells him the distance he is into his load.
An early version of Range ALERT™, Pallet Distance Ranging Device for Forklift was developed by Process Automation in the fall of 2001 for General Motors. This design had 3 preset ranges and hence was limited to three container sizes. The present inventors were approached in October of 2004 by the R. E. Michel Company to design a version of Range ALERT™ that would work when moving many different sized containers and products. The inventors worked with R. E. Michel to develop the current Range ALERT™. The invention has a digital display that can be used with many different sized containers and loads. The first prototype system of this product was delivered for evaluation to R. E. Michel on Jan. 29, 2005. The present inventors developed a product brochure and began showing the Range ALERT™ with the Digital Display to the public at the Ohio BWC Safety Congress in Columbus on Mar. 23, 2005.